Safe Food Handling Could Save Your Business
Author: MalcolmJ.Richmond Total views: 5 Word Count: 575
Whether it's the 4 Mile Restaurant & Pub, the Chez Michel Restaurant, the Heron Rock Bistro, the Club Bar & Grill, or any other great restaurant in Melbourne, food safety is of paramount importance. And no matter how great your business is, even simple food handling mistakes in the kitchen could seriously harm you- even possibly put you out of business.
As a restaurant, your business depends on two things. One is a loyal base of repeat customers. The other is the public's perception of your restaurant. The restaurant business is to a large extent a reputation based business. One lawsuit related to improper food handling could ruin your establishment.
Not only do you need to take certain basic steps and make sure all of your kitchen employees always do in order to prevent directly harming customers with something like food poisoning, you also have to do things right for the sanitation inspectors who may decide to drop in on you and see how you really run things. Even an employee who sees food handling mistakes in the kitchen may squeal on you, especially if they ever lose their job.
There's more to it all than just proper food storage and waste disposal, too.
Food preparation areas must be kept clean at all times. While this sounds easy enough, it is very easy to do this wrong. You must use different cutting boards for meat, seafood and vegetables, for instance. Some restaurants use stainless steel surfaces for food preparation - this can dull knives and according to some, impart a hint of metallic flavor to meats. This is harmless, but hardly good for your reputation. Plastic cutting boards are better as they are easy to clean and inherently more sanitary than are wooden cutting boards. After use, each cutting board must be washed thoroughly. For deep cleaning, chlorine bleach can be employed, but make sure to rinse well if bleach is used in cleaning these surfaces.
Utensils also must be washed after each dish they are used to prepare.
To keep them free of harmful bacteria, meats must always be cooked to a minimal internal temperature. For red meats and pork, this temperature is a minimum if 69 degrees centigrade. For seafood it is 74 degrees. Even if a rare steak has been ordered, it must be cooked to at least this minimum temperature for at least 15 seconds to minimize the risk of food poisoning. Any meat which is not very fresh should be cooked to very well done.
Preparing raw foods such as sushi requires extreme care. Serving these foods really means that you have to just have a top-notch clean kitchen and preparation staff, period, in addition to making doubly sure your sushi supplier is very sanitary. Disposable gloves and hair coverings or tie-backs must always be worn by people handling sushi and the preparation area should be kept so clean that, as the saying goes, one could eat off the floor. Any sushi that is not at its freshest needs to be thrown out.
It is surprising how many kitchen workers neglect to wash their hands with soap and hot water in between meal preparation, even when raw meat is involved. Hand washing between meal preparations is a must and washing hands in between say, handling meat and vegetables is a very good idea.
By enforcing a strict kitchen sanitation and food handling program, you will be protecting the interests of your customers as well as those of your restaurant.
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About the Author
Author: Malcolm J. Richmond will show you how to avoid food safety risks to your restaurant business. Visit the "Food Safety" website for more great information on protecting your business by employing food health standards.
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